Trump & His Family Benefit BIGLY From Coronavirus Bill

When the over $2 trillion Coronavirus bill was agreed to, Democrats celebrated the fact that they had been able to include a provision that would prevent Donald Trump, anyone working for the Trump administration, anyone in Congress (and their employees), and the families of those people from being able to qualify for the loans in the $500 billion dollar program for corporations.

It was thought that this would prevent Trump and his family from benefitting for a bill aimed at helping hurting Americans and small businesses. Unfortunately, that was not true.

While Trump and his family cannot tap into the $500 billion dollar slush find for corporations, the Republicans included another provision in the bill that would give real estate moguls, like Trump and Kushner, a huge tax break.

Here is how the president of Public Citizen describes the benefit:

Good grief. 

Turn with me now to page 203 of the 880-page economic stimulus package — which the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to take up today — where we find a devious little surprise inserted by Senate Republicans. 

Under the proposed stimulus plan, the 0.1% would be able to sidestep taxes on stocks and other investments by claiming only-on-paper losses on real estate, even if they’re raking in profits. 

Can you think of any wealthy, well-connected real-estate investors? 

Like, I don’t know, Jared Kushner? 

Or Donald Trump? 

Congress itself says this would be the second-biggest tax break in the entire stimulus package. 

It’s estimated that this loophole (more like loop-chasm) would cost $170 billion in lost tax revenue over the next decade. 

And exactly how much does letting real-estate tycoons — including Donald Trump and Jared Kushner — avoid paying their fair share, or any share, of taxes help the everyday Americans and small businesses that are holding on for dear life in the face of this coronavirus pandemic? 

Not one damn bit. 

Stay safe. 

- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen 

House GOP Votes A New Tax Break For Billionaires

(The image above is by the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)

If you had any doubt that the congressional GOP was in the pocket of the super-rich, this should remove that doubt. The House Republicans have just passed a bill that would eliminate the estate tax -- even though that tax only applies to the richest 0.2% of the people in this country. It will cost this country hundreds of billions of dollars, and they made no effort to pay for it (in spite of the fact that they whine loudly when the government helps Americans who really need it (children, poor, seniors, unemployed, etc.). Here is how Steve Benen describes this travesty at msnbc.com:

In recent months, high-profile Republicans, sounding quite a bit like class warriors, have complained bitterly about the wealthy benefiting most from the recent economic recovery. Even House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), without a hint of irony, complained that recent trends point to “exacerbated inequality.” The far-right congressman added that only “the wealthy are doing really well.”

It’s genuinely impossible to reconcile Republican rhetoric and Republican priorities in light of votes like these.

The House voted Thursday to repeal the estate tax, a longtime priority of Republicans that also spurred Democratic charges that the GOP is in the pockets of the rich. […]

The White House has threatened to veto the measure, and the bill does not appear to have the 60 votes necessary to break a Democratic filibuster and get through the Senate.

The final tally was 240 to 179, with nearly every GOP lawmaker voting for it and nearly every Democrat voting against it.

When describing Republican tax proposals, it’s not uncommon to talk about policies that disproportionately benefit the very wealthy. GOP proponents will say a bill benefits all taxpayers, but they’ll brush past the fact that the rich benefit most. This, however, is altogether different – today’s bill, called the “Death Tax Repeal Act,” quite literally benefits multi-millionaires and billionaires exclusively.

It’s not an exaggeration to say House Republicans, en masse, voted for a $269 billion giveaway to the top 0.2%. Under the plan, GOP lawmakers, who occasionally pretend to care about “fiscal responsibility,” would simply add the entire $269 billion cost to the deficit, leaving future generations to pay for a massive tax break for the hyper-wealthy.

Wait, it gets worse.

Asked about the bill this week, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters, “[The] estate tax’s repeal is long overdue. Remember, all of this money that families have saved has all been taxed, much of it multiple times. And then if you die, we’re going to tax you again. I think it’s totally unfair.”

Regrettably, the Speaker isn’t just trying to give the hyper-wealthy a $269 billion tax break for no reason, he’s also confused about the basics of the policy he’s championing.

Even by contemporary GOP standards, today’s vote is pretty obscene. At a time of rising economic inequality, House Republicans have prioritized a bill to make economic inequality worse on purpose. At a time in which much of Congress wants to make the deficit smaller, House Republicans have prioritized a bill to make the deficit much larger.

At a time when prosperity it concentrated too heavily at the very top, House Republicans have prioritized a bill to deliver enormous benefits to multi-millionaires and billionaires – and no one else.

Asked to defend this, Republican leaders – the same leaders who balk at all requests for public investment, saying the nation is too “broke” to fund domestic priorities – say it’s only “fair” to approve a $269 billion giveaway to the hyper-wealthy.

It’s like Lewis Carroll and Charles Dickens got together to write a novel, and Congress’ majority wants Americans to live in it.

Another Corporate Whiner

The person pictured on the left is Harold Hamm. He is the CEO of Continental Resources, and his oil company has earned $1.8 billion in profits in the last five years. A few days ago, he testified at a congressional hearing. He wants Congress to continue to give his company subsidies, in spite of the huge profits his company has shown.

In addition, he whined to Congress that his company is be forced to pay too much in taxes. He actually said, "Continental's effective tax rate is 38%". Now that is in the Congressional Record, and I'm sure many Republicans will be quoting Hamm as they talk about how the poor corporations are being forced to pay high taxes and need a big tax cut.

The problem with that is simply that it is not true. An "effective" tax rate is not the rate in the books, but the rate a company actually pays -- and Continental doesn't pay anywhere near 38%. They don't even pay a double digit tax rate.

In the last five years, Continental paid a tax rate of 1.9% in 2007, 2.6% in 2008, 0.1% in 2009, 3.2% in 2010, and 1.9% in 2011. That means for the last five years the company paid an average tax rate of 2.2%. I'll bet most (or all) middle class workers would think they had died and gone to heaven if they could pay that small a tax rate -- and yet, this company whines before Congress that it is paying too much. Talk about greed!

And it shouldn't surprise us that Hamm is Willard Mitt Romney's chief energy advisor. Hamm has to love Willard's plan to give corporations and rich people massive new tax cuts (while raising taxes on workers and cutting social programs for Americans hurting from the Republican recession).

And now a new study has been released which makes Romney's tax cut for the rich proposal (and Hamm's display of mendacity before Congress) sound pretty lame. The study was done by Owen M. Zidar (a former staff economist on President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors and a grad student at the University of California at Berkley). He studied economic growth in states with the largest number of high income individuals, figuring "states with a large share of high income taxpayers should grow faster following a tax cut for high income earners".

But what he found did not support that theory. A tax cut for low income people was much more effective in boosting the economy than a tax cut for high income earners. Here is how Think Progress put it:

“Almost all of the stimulative effect of tax cuts,” Zidar found, “results from tax cuts for the bottom 90%. A one percent of GDP tax cut for the bottom 90% results in 2.7 percentage points of GDP growth over a two-year period. The corresponding estimate for the top 10% is 0.13 percentage points and is insignificant statistically.”

This doesn't come as any surprise. Economic growth and job creation is not spurred by giving rich people more money. They already have enough money to buy whatever they want, and the extra money just sits in their bank account. Economic growth and job creation is spurred only by an increase in demand, and the easiest way to create demand is to funnel more money to low income people -- because they have to spend that money, and it circulates through the economy helping everyone and contributing to a healthy and growing economy.

Don't believe the corporate whiners wanting new tax cuts, or the Republican politicians wanting to give them massive new tax cuts. That will not help the economy or create new jobs. In fact, that is the same old "trickle-down" policy that cratered the economy in the first place. It didn't work for George Bush, and it won't work for Willard Romney.

Big Oil

Think Progress goes on to point out:

Every hour so far in 2012, the five largest oil corporations have recorded a$14,400,000 profit. And every hour, they received more than $270,000 in federal tax breaks. That adds up to $2.4 billion in subsidies every year for the five largest oil corporations — Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips — all ranked as the top 9 companies in the world.


Big Oil profits more in one minute than what 96 percent of American households earn in one year. Even so, Mitt Romney and House Republicans want to double what the five companies receive in federal tax breaks to $12.8 million per day, even though the three publicly owned U.S. companies paid an average tax rate of under 17 percent.

GOP Healthcare Proposals Are A Joke

One of the most important issues in the current campaign for president is healthcare. It has become obvious that our healthcare system is not just broken -- it has become the laughingstock of the civilized world.

In the richest nation on earth, over 40 million people have no healthcare insurance at all, and millions that do have insurance are just one serious illness away from bankruptcy (medical expenses not covered by insurance are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S.).

This has become such a serious issue with voters that even Republican candidates are touting plans to "solve" the problem, even though they have traditionally not recognized a "right" to healthcare. They now recognize they cannot get elected unless they at least appear to care about healthcare.

But the plans the Republican candidates have come up with don't really solve the problems. They are little more than welfare for the big insurance companies.

Three of the candidates have had cancer themselves -- McCain, Thompson and Guiliani. Sadly, their silly plans would not even allow themselves to get healthcare coverage, if they were not rich or already covered by government-provided insurance (government insurance seems to be OK for them, but not for others).

Their plans are nothing more than providing tax breaks to help people to buy private insurance. But they don't want any rules that would force these insurance companies to accept those with pre-existing conditions (such as a previous bout with cancer).

Their plans would also still allow the insurance companies to refuse to pay for medical procedures they deem too costly or unnecessary. In other words, the insurance companies would still be making the medical decisions -- not the doctors.

These plans would do little or nothing to actually solve our nation's healthcare problems, but it would pump billions of dollars into the coffers of the already wealthy insurance companies. Once again, the Republicans are willing to ignore the problems of the citizens, while they help their corporate buddies to get richer.

Their is only one real solution to our healthcare crises. We must get the insurance companies out of healthcare, and institute a single-payer government system that covers everyone and puts doctors back in charge of making medical decisions.

Anything less is unacceptable.